Dr. Helena Dolny will discuss her new book, Before Forever After. She will talk about why it is so important to have conversations about how we want to live and what matters to us when we die.

Helena Dolny is an international executive and life coach based in South Africa. In her book, Before Forever After, she shares 50 real-life short stories about how people deal with ‘end-of-life’ situations and why this matters. The book highlights the difficult (but necessary) decisions and challenges that we often have to face, when dealing with a terminal illness or loss involving ourselves or people close to us. In the book, Helena shares suggestions and checklists to inspire further reflections on how to deal with loss – particularly the emotional, psychological, financial, and health implications. Dr. Dolny believes that by engaging consciously and continually with our mortality, we suffer less, experience life more fully, and reduce the stress that often comes with experiencing loss.

Review

“As a mental health clinician and university academic with twenty years experience, I can say without fear of contradiction that this book is a landmark publication… Although Dr. Dolny’s perspective draws on an adulthood lived under the warm sun of Africa, her deeply compassionate message is for anyone living anywhere on the planet who will die one day or who might find themselves preparing to say farewell to friends and family. Read it sooner rather than later.” — Michael Solomon on Good Reads (read this and other reviews here)

]]>https://www.africabookclub.com/upcoming-book-event-helena-dolny-on-mortality-grief-and-living-life-fully/feed/0Win the Ultimate Gift Hamper from Africa Book Clubhttps://www.africabookclub.com/win-the-ultimate-gift-hamper-from-africa-book-club/
https://www.africabookclub.com/win-the-ultimate-gift-hamper-from-africa-book-club/#respondSun, 31 Dec 2017 04:12:29 +0000https://www.africabookclub.com/?p=21065Enter our ultimate gift hamper competition for a chance to win all 19 books featured in the Africa Book Club 2017 books of the year. The list includes a mix of award winners, short story collections and children’s books (see full list here).

The winner will be randomly selected from all entries received and announced on Monday, April 2, 2018.

The winner will be drawn on April 2, 2018 from all entries received before the closing date.

The winner will be asked to provide a valid shipping address.

Africa Book Club will make a good-faith effort to ship books to anywhere in the world at standard international postal rates. Delivery times vary and may take up to five weeks for certain international destinations.

Only one entry will be accepted per person.

The winner will be notified by email using the address through which he or she entered the competition.

Only the winning entrant will be contacted by Africa Book Club. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

The winner’s name may be published on the Book Club site after the closing of the competition.

How We Select Our Winners

All entries are assigned a unique number, ranging from 1 to the highest number. Winners are then randomly selected using the sequence generator tool. For more about this tool, visit www.random.org.

]]>https://www.africabookclub.com/win-the-ultimate-gift-hamper-from-africa-book-club/feed/0The Book of Memory (by Petina Gappah)https://www.africabookclub.com/the-book-of-memory-by-petina-gappah/
https://www.africabookclub.com/the-book-of-memory-by-petina-gappah/#respondSun, 31 Dec 2017 00:48:10 +0000https://www.africabookclub.com/?p=21061Our selection to kick off the year is Petina Gappah’s award winning novel, The Book of Memory.

The books tells the story of an albino woman named Memory, who is languishing in a maximum security prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has been tried and convicted of murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened; that is, the events that led to the killing of her adoptive father, Lloyd Hendricks. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers? Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between past and present, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award-winning writer Petina Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.

Read along with us this month, and share your thoughts in the comments below. Tell us what you liked or didn’t like about the book, what surprised you, or what memories the book might have brought back. And if you have any book suggestions, just drop us a line at reviews@africabookclub.com

As yet another year goes by, we are excited to present the Africa Book Club 2017 books of the year – our selection of the best books about Africa, or written by African authors.

This year’s picks feature a mix of established and emerging writers from across the continent. As in the past, the list includes several award-winning titles and picks by notable media such as the New York Times, Sunday Times Literary Prize and others.

To compile the list, we checked out over 50 leading publishers and scoured various newspapers and websites. We also tapped into our contacts in the book world for recommendations. Finally, as we have done in the past, we tracked down as many literary award nominations and winners as we could find.

For our readers’ convenience, we have grouped our selections in three categories – fiction, non-fiction and children’s books.

Let us know what you think in the comments below. As always, we welcome your recommendations and suggestions.

Fiction

Dance of the Jacaranda (by Peter Kimani)

Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s Dance of the Jakaranda illustrates the discordant history of East Indians in Kimani’s native Kenya, centered on the construction of a railroad connecting Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean at the end of the 19th century.

Described as funny, perceptive and subversive, this widely acclaimed book was selected by the New York Times as one of its best books of 2017.

Stay with Me (by Ayobami Adebayo)

Released in the US by Knopf Publishing Group, Ayobami Adebayo’s debut novel, Stay with Me, made the New York Times 2017 books list and was shortlisted for the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction. Set in Nigeria, Stay with Me gives voice to both husband and wife as they tell the story of their marriage–and the forces that threaten to tear it apart.

The riveting novel depicts a loving couple, whose marriage is tested by the pressure to have a child.

Behold the Dreamers (by Imbolo Mbue)

Released as a paperback in the US in June 2017, Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, has been described as a compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream—the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy

The book was a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award.

The Woman Next Door (by Yewande Omotoso)

Shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times Literary Awards/Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, Yewande Omotoso’s book, The Woman Next Door, was also cited as one of NPR’s books of the year.

The book centers around two women, Hortensia James and Marion Agostino. They are neighbors. One is black, the other white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed, and are living with questions, disappointments, and secrets that have brought them shame. And each has something that the woman next door deeply desires.

A winner of the PEN/ Hemingway Award, Homegoing is set in Ghana and tells the stories of two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.

Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem.

Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (by Helen Oyeyemi)

Reissued as a paperback edition in 2017, Helen Oyeyemi’s latest book, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours has been described as playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined. The novel is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side.

Okorafor’s new book, Akata Warrior, is the long-awaited sequel to the genre-breaking Akata Witch. The book stars Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, who has been inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she begins to develop her magical powers, Sunny learns that she has been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book.

Eventually, Sunny knows she must confront her destiny. With the support of her Leopard Society friends, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha, and of her spirit face, Anyanwu, she will travel through worlds both visible and invisible to the mysteries town of Osisi, where she will fight a climactic battle to save humanity.

Rotten Row (by Petina Gappah)

On the heels of her hugely successful 2016 novel, The Book of Memory, Petina Gappah was back in 2017 with a new story collection, Rotten Row. In her latest book, Petina Gappah crosses the barriers of class, race, gender and sexual politics in Zimbabwe to explore the causes and effects of crime, and to meditate on the nature of justice. Rotten Row represents a leap in artistry and achievement from the award-winning author. With compassion and humor, Petina Gappah paints portraits of lives aching for meaning to produce a moving and universal tableau.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky (by Lesley Nneka Arimah)

This debut collection by Lesley Nneka Arimah was named a ‘Best Book of 2017’ by NPR, Southern Living, Electric Literature, The Root, The Guardian, Bustle, Thrillist, and Publisher’s Weekly. It also won the 2017 Kirkus Prize.

What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky is a collection of short stories that explore the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.

Black Moses (by Alain Mabanckou)

Originally published in French, Alain Mabanckou’s latest book, Black Moses, was translated into English and published this year to great public acclaim. Longlisted by the Aspen Words Literary Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, the book further cements Mabanckou’s reputation as one of Africa’s foremost writers.

The book’s main character is Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bakoko (or as most people prefer to call him, Moses). He lives in an orphanage, where he is constantly picked on by two twins, Songi-Songi and Tala-Tala. But after Moses exacts revenge on the twins by lacing their food with hot pepper, the twins take Moses under their wing, escape the orphanage, and move to the bustling port town of Pointe-Noire, where they form a gang that survives on petty theft. What follows is a funny, moving, larger-than-life tale that chronicles Moses’s ultimately tragic journey through the Pointe-Noire underworld and the politically repressive world of Congo-Brazzaville in the 1970s and 80s.

Season of Crimson Blossoms tells the captivating story of an illicit affair between a twenty-five-year-old street gang leader, Hassan Reza, and a devout fifty-five-year-old widow and grandmother, Binta Zubairu, who yearns for intimacy after the sexual repression of her marriage and the pain of losing her first son. This story of love and longing—set in a conservative Muslim community in Nigeria—reveals deep emotions that defy age, class, and religion.

This novel gives a unique perspective on life and relationships in Northern Nigeria, a region vastly under-represented in the body of world literature.

Harvest of Skulls (by Abdourahman A. Waberi)

In 1994, the Akazu, Rwandan’s political elite, planned the genocidal mass slaughter of 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and Hutu who lived in the country. Shaped by the author’s own experiences in Rwanda and by the stories shared by survivors, Harvest of Skulls stands twenty years after the genocide as an indisputable resource for discussions on testimony and witnessing, the complex relationship between victims and perpetrators, the power of the moral imagination, and how survivors can rebuild a society haunted by the ghost of its history.

Jazz and Palm Wine (by Emmanuel Dongala)

Originally released in France in 1996, Dongala’s short story collection, Jazz and Palm Wine, was republished this year. Jazz, aliens, and witchcraft collide in this collection. The influence of Kongo culture is tangible throughout, as customary beliefs clash with party conceptions of scientific and rational thought. In the first half of Jazz and Palm Wine, the characters emerge victorious from decades of colonial exploitation in the Congo only to confront the burdensome bureaucracy, oppressive legal systems, and corrupt governments of the post-colonial era. The ruling political party attempts to impose order and scientific thinking while the people struggles to deal with drought, infertility, and impossible regulations and policies; both sides mix witchcraft, diplomacy, and violence in their efforts to survive.

The second half of the book is set in the United States during the turbulent civil rights struggles of the 1960s. In the title story, African and American leaders come together to save the world from extraterrestrials by serving vast quantities of palm wine and playing American jazz.

Non-Fiction

Before Forever After: When Conversations About Living Meet Questions About Dying (by Helena Dolny)

In Before Forever After, Helena Dolny imagines a world in which people engage in death-in-life conversations as part of everyday living. She believes we’d live better and suffer less if we were to talk about dying more readily. In a world, where end-of-life discussions are still taboo in many societies, Helena Dolny offers an important and highly readable book that will help readers reflect on the important life decisions they need to make about life and death, and how to be prepared when the time comes to say farewell to loved ones.

Helena interviewed people across continents in diverse professions including the funeral business, palliative care, spiritual leaders and financial advisors. The outcome: 57 stories on nine themes that will make reader think about how they choose to live and how they would prefer to die. This book’s rich cast of storytellers does not provide answers. The gift Before Forever After offers is the inspiration to craft clearer and sharper questions so that readers may shape their own unique response to this fierce, fundamental and inevitable force of life.

Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of South Africa’s Marikana Massacre (by Greg Marinovich)

A winner of the 2017 Sunday Times Literary Awards/ Alan Paton Prize, Murder at Small Koppie is an award-winning investigation that has been called the most important piece of journalism in post-apartheid South Africa. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Greg Marinovich delves into the truth behind the massacre that killed thirty-four platinum miners and wounded seventy-eight more in August of 2012 at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa’s North West province.

Children’s Books

The Wooden Camel (by Wanuri Kahiu)

Etabo dreams of being a camel racer. One day he might even beat his older brother when they race. But with the price of water rising, Etabo’s father must sell the camels, and his siblings must find work. What will Etabo do now? From acclaimed Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu and Italian illustrator Manuela Adreani, The Wooden Camel is a story of love and hope that centers on the inspiring Turkana people of northwest Kenya. Told with gentleness and humor, it is a universal story about keeping one’s dreams alive.

Chicken in the Kitchen (by Nnedi Okorafor)

Released in the US this year, Chicken in the Kitchen is about a young girl, Anyaugo, who follows a mischievous chicken on a fantastical adventure that challenges her to safeguard her family’s food for the following day’s New Yam Festival.

World Fantasy Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor provides us with a hugely entertaining look at the fascinating masquerade culture of West Africa, told from the perspective of a plucky young Nigerian girl who finds the courage to protect the traditions she loves.

Femi the Fox: A Pot of Jollof (by Jeanette Kwakye)

Jeanette Kwakye, a former Olympic athlete was searching for a children’s book for her son, but couldn’t find one that featured characters from Africa. She decided to writer her own.

Her book, Femi the Fox: A Pot of Jolloff, is a children’s story about West African cooking and culture. With beautiful illustrations from South African based illustrator, Katlego Kgabale, this is sure to be a firm favorite in many homes. Watch this BBC Africa clip in which Kwakye talks about her book.

Curious and caring Little WANDA leads young readers on a food adventure across Africa in Where is Wanda? Little Wanda Finds a Cure for Nana. Guided by her father’s wisdom, Little WANDA sets out on a journey from America to Africa. Using her magic apron, she travels to Nigeria in search for Nana’s cure with the help of Big WANDA.

Join the conversation. Tell us what were your favorite books of the year and why?

]]>https://www.africabookclub.com/africa-book-club-2017-books-of-the-year/feed/0Talking about Living and Dying – A Conversation with Helena Dolnyhttps://www.africabookclub.com/talking-about-death-and-dying-a-conversation-with-helena-dolny/
https://www.africabookclub.com/talking-about-death-and-dying-a-conversation-with-helena-dolny/#commentsMon, 12 Jun 2017 03:30:16 +0000https://www.africabookclub.com/?p=20798Helena Dolny is an international executive coach, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the author of four books. Her first book, Joe Slovo: The unfinished biography was published by Ravan Press in 1995. In 2001 Penguin published her second book, Banking on Change, and in 2009 she edited Team Coaching: Artists at work, also published by Penguin. Her latest title, Before Forever After, is out this month. It is a ground-breaking exploration of the subject of human mortality, and how ordinary people deal with the inevitability of their dying, or with losing a loved one. It explores different themes, including the often difficult choices and revelations that follow death.

In this wide-ranging interview with Africa Book Club, Dolny talks about her involvement with South Africa’s African National Congress, what led to write her latest book, her personal story of losing her mother and former husband, and how this has influenced her.

Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up and what has been your life journey so far?
I grew up in a small town, Accrington, in north-east England. It’s a town in a basin, surrounded by wilderness, one of a series of towns which had cotton weaving and coal mining as the main industries when I was a child. I grew up as the Catholic child of Eastern European World War II refugees not really knowing ‘English’ people, as my schoolmates were all of Irish, Italian descent or like me. I took a gap year pre-university and did the UK equivalent of Peace Corps. I spent a year as an assistant teacher on a mission school in Zambia. I travelled every school holiday and went to Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya but ended the gap year by travelling through South Africa and catching a boat from Cape Town back to UK. Those three weeks changed my life. I joined organizations supporting independence for Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau as well as going to anti-apartheid demonstrations.

I studied Agricultural Economics and when Mozambique became independent I went to work there and stayed ten years. Then I moved to Lusaka to work on post-apartheid policy research and completed a PhD on land markets and their relevance to land reform. I worked in agriculture until 2005 when I changed professions, having completed a Masters in Executive Coaching. Now I try and work internationally. Besides the professional satisfaction of challenging work, it offers me a chance to maintain links with a family diaspora in Europe and the US. I have two daughters who are beginning their own families, one in Cape Town and one in Brooklyn and to date I have three grandchildren. But home is very much Johannesburg, where I live with my husband John Perlman, a social entrepreneur who founded Dreamfields, a soccer project for primary school children -as well as his being a radio talk show host.

Helena Dolny and Nelson Mandela (2004) – Photo Credit: Dudu Zitha

Can you share with us how you came to be involved with the African National Congress and the anti-apartheid movement?
When I was nineteen I traveled through South Africa on leaving my volunteer assignment in Zambia. It was the first time I heard the word ‘kaffir’, the first time to be shunned by peers for having worked with black children, the first time to witness institutionalized racism in the signage of public amenities: toilets, park benches, railway carriages. I was shocked and moved to join political organizations as a student on return to the UK. I fell in love with a South African who I was married to for seven years and went to work in Mozambique. My British passport enabled me to easily do errands for the African National Congress. In 1982, I formally applied to become a member. I could make this application because of being married to a South African. By then it seemed clear to me that I could not see myself ever returning to the UK.

What was it like to be married to Joe Slovo, and to be by his side when he passed on? Do you share some of that in the book?
Being married to someone famous is not easy. Some people will court your friendship; others will shun you because of differences they have with your husband. I’m also not very good at being an ornamental appendage. Joe’s leadership world was overwhelmingly male and the conversational questions directed to me were often patronizing. I had to learn to keep a lid on my irritation!

On the other hand, I got glimpses of Eastern Europe pre 1990, travelled through the then Soviet Union and China and got a (albeit filtered) view of societies on the brink of seismic change.
I always thought Joe would die assassinated, as did his late wife and my colleague, Ruth First. But it was cancer, multiple myeloma that claimed his life. We had almost four years from diagnosis to death. I’m grateful for that time. It was the most significant time of Joe’s political career, and as a personal experience it shaped who I became and the choices I made and continue to make.

Do you feel that the enough progress has been made? Is today’s South Africa worth the sacrifices that you, Joe, and others made?

I have been known to weep myself to sleep in recent history after conversations about the state of our nation. Alan Paton decades ago wrote Cry the Beloved Country. We’re there again in a situation that is tear-worthy. Yes, there is much that has happened. People are enfranchised. We have a progressive constitution. We have institutions that are in place to prevent the worst abuses that happened under apartheid. But unemployment, poverty and violence as the legacy of apartheid are rampant.

Was it worth the sacrifices?

Yes. It was definitely worth it. I think it’s important to be humble. We are, as individuals, small cogs in the big wheel of history. [clickandtweet handle=”” hashtag=”” related=”” layout=”” position=””]Many of us look for the opportunity to influence the unfolding future – what that means at any one time will depend on what circumstances surround us[/clickandtweet].

So, what led you to writing your new book – Before Forever Ever?

My daughter Tessa experienced a death in her circles. It brought home to her how death can take you by surprise and this disturbed her deeply. She phoned me and asked me if I had anything to read that would help her to think with more equanimity about mortality. I had many books on my shelf because of my husband’s four years of cancer. But I couldn’t find the book that I would want my daughter to read, neither on my shelves nor searching online. One weekend, on impulse I sat down thought about what would be in such a book. I wrote a book outline and my writing journey began.

Does the process of writing get easier after the first one? What was it like working on Before Forever After, and how long did it take?
I’ve never found writing difficult. I’ve always enjoyed it -whether it’s been an article for a journal or my PhD. I lose myself in writing, time flies and I find pleasure in the crafting and polishing. I liken it to the carpentry of hand- made furniture. I’d like to think that I’m getting better at writing with the practice I’m getting.

I loved working on Before Forever After. I am an enthralled listener. It’s a privilege to listen to people telling me about their lives. The book took eight years to write, the first six years were sporadic. I’d squeeze in a half day on a weekend, or the mornings if I was away on holiday in the bush. But in 2015 I was awarded a Rockefeller writing residency in Bellagio, Lake Como, Italy and that was a sign to me to shrink my paid workload and focus on the book to bring it to completion.

What are some of the main themes in the story? – The choices we make about how we want to live this earthly life.

That even small nuggets of joy will make us want to carry on living even when life is hard and we’re very sick. It’s important to think through our personal preferences concerning not only end-of-life choices but also the rituals that follow after death, and write them down and make them known. In a modernizing world we’re not engaging with death in the same way as our ancestors and this has a psychological cost -it can make bereavement more difficult. Longevity can be challenging, if accompanied by increasing frailty and needs to be thought about. True love is about respecting other people’s choices especially when these differ from your own.

Are these all your personal stories?

About a third of the stories are either mine or those of my extended family.

The book began drawing on my experience and I expected it to be biographical. But then I wrote for a Sunday newspaper a series of eight columns called, ‘Let’s talk about dying’ with my e-mail address attached and many readers contacted me and started to share their stories and so the idea that other peoples’ stories would be part of the book took root. I asked people to sit with me, asked if I could use a tape recorder as we talked. I employed a transcriber to type up the conversations and the stories I crafted are based on the transcripts. Finally, pre-publishing, I sent the stories back to people to confirm they were comfortable enough with what I’d written.

The breadth of the stories speak to the many facets of death, and how each one of us encounters the difficult end-of-life questions in our own lives and those of our dear ones. In one of the stories, Joe: The Blue Aerogramme, you reflect on the one secret that Joe took with him. What was that and how did you come to terms with this?

Siring a child out of wedlock! It’s such an ancient story! Nothing new in this one. I’m amazed how many people have now shared with me, “well in my fifties I discovered I had a half-brother that I didn’t know about.

So my late husband Joe had two sons born out of wedlock some fifteen years apart, one born in South Africa and one born in London. The first was a casual, opportunistic encounter, a lawyer working on a case in a provincial town and two people make eyes at each other and end up in bed together that night!
The second son was from a long extra-marital relationship with a woman who was a fellow activist in the African National Congress.

I found it difficult that, at the time of his dying, I’d known Joe for almost two decades, and been his wife for the last eight years of his life. We had talked about so many things, so deeply, so intimately, that it was a shock to learn something I didn’t know -and which all the Londoner-exiles in our circle were aware of.

What made it difficult to come to terms with?

I asked myself how well did I really know the man I loved? I asked myself if I am overly judgmental and therefore what was it about me that meant that Joe did not talk about this? I had difficulty with the non-acknowledgment of a child -it’s something I found very difficult.

Now after writing the book, I’m more accepting of how family constellations work out and play out their roles in the theatre of life, and that pacts are made, lies are lived out. In the book, there’s the story of Elsa. She thinks she’s the second born younger sister, born when her sister was 13, but it turns out that her sister is her mother. There was a family agreement between parents and teenage daughter to keep this pregnancy a secret.

Why is it not easy for us to face up to our mortality and what are the most difficult stories to share?

I wanted to write a book in which the stories would be our opportunity for learning. We’re hard-wired to remember stories – our ancestors were story tellers- its only recent in the history of human evolution that we’ve learn to write.

So, I have shared personal stories and in some of them I don’t come out so well – or not as well as I’d like to – but I decided to include them because I hope they are of service to the learning of others. For example, my younger self did not pay any attention to ritual; my older self missed calling a priest in time for my mother’s last rites.

What can you tell us from your own experience and from the dozens of stories you collected?

Personally I learned four things. Firstly, that I, personally, need to “do” less and “be” more! It’s very easy for me to get involved in doing practical things, or always busy being purposeful, so my personal learning is about the importance of being present versus being busy, and that on important occasions, ‘doing, means doing nothing, but rather being with and feeling the moment.’ On family occasions and in the bush when there’s a special sighting, I think I take less photos than I used to, because I want to feel the intensity of that special moment and let my eyes imprint the visuals on my heart and mind rather than fiddling with a camera getting the frame and the focus right.

Secondly, I learnt more about “the joy factor” that you can be very ill, even immobile, but life will offer nuggets of joy that make you want to continue living. And that once these are gone, then there’s a readiness to go.

Thirdly, I gained insight into elderliness and the different choices that people make about their lifestyle during this time which, for many, is a time of increasing fragility. This has helped me clarify my own thinking, should I be privileged to continue to live into elderliness.

And fourthly I learnt that true love is about respecting choices, especially when your own choice would be different.

As a writer and life coach, how do you get people to talk about death, and share their deepest fears and emotions?

There’s a saying, ‘The more you listen, the more you get to listen.’ I’ve had years and years of special opportunities to listen to people. In my twenties, doing rural research in northern Mozambique, I’d have been sitting in the afternoon listening to a family tell me of their harvests -having spent the morning with them in the field picking cotton -a quid pro quo exchange of time. I guess over time there’s an ease to create rapport, a practice of asking questions that open avenues of conversation. I think also that while I’m clear that the time I spend with people is principally about them, I share something of myself, my own vulnerabilities and imperfections, so that we are in conversation about a shared humanity. I don’t situate myself as ‘the expert’ I’ve always been clear that whilst I may be a well-informed lay person, that’s what I am, a lay-person and that’s my readership: other lay persons.

Are you actively involved in life counseling, or helping people deal with the implications of death?

I expected I would be spending time as a Hospice support giver, that’s why I did my training, but the last two years my life was filled to overflowing with my own mothers slow dying, my professional coaching work and my writing.

2017 is a new beginning as my mother died last December and now the book is finished. I want to think carefully about how I can best contribute to my main purpose, the premise of the book, that if we were to have life-death conversations more readily we would live better, die better and there’d be less suffering.

Given your past involvement with DignitySA, was the book inspired in some way by your association with this organization?

The book was already work-in-progress and preceded my involvement in DignitySA. I’ve been very careful in writing the section of the book called Respecting Choices that this is not principally an advocacy book for assisted dying -although it’s clear that I am a supporter.

This part of my journey began with Joe’s death. At dawn of the day before he died, I watched him hunched up, pallid, his face a contorted pained expression of ‘I’m not enjoying one bit of life anymore’ and my thoughts were about how if this were my dog, my cat, I would be taking it to the vet to have it put down as an act of compassion. The insistence by some professionals, religious and medical, of prolonging life with medical treatment seems to me to be at times cruel and inhumane. And palliative care has its limits. Canadian physicians requested an inquiry into assisted dying because they said they could not always eliminate pain and intractable suffering. There also the question of identity and dignity. The functioning of my biological physical body allows me to be me, the fully conscious, joyful, conversational me. When I can’t talk with you, laugh with you, when I’m given opioids to dull the pain that obliterate my consciousness, then who am I?

I included some extracts in the book written by theologian Nancy Duff’s, I hope people will also read the longer lecture that she wrote in which she answers critics from a theological point of view.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

This book is a call to action. It ends with an invitation, “Conversations with ourselves” that offers readers these questions after you’ve read all these stories about others – what does this mean for you and the life you’re living? What decisions do you want to make and record and talk about?’

Where can readers get the book? Will it be available outside South Africa?

The kindle ebook version is available internationally on Amazon. In South Africa, print versions are available at most leading bookstores. We are also currently in the process of finalizing the Amazon “print-on-demand’ option which solves the problem of shipping books around the world, especially for African authors. More information is available on my website – http://www.helenadolny.com.

]]>https://www.africabookclub.com/talking-about-death-and-dying-a-conversation-with-helena-dolny/feed/1Interview with Ugandan Author Wambalye Weikamahttps://www.africabookclub.com/interview-with-ugandan-author-wambalye-weikama/
https://www.africabookclub.com/interview-with-ugandan-author-wambalye-weikama/#commentsWed, 01 Jul 2015 12:54:37 +0000https://www.africabookclub.com/?p=16788This month, Africa Book Club speaks with Ugandan author Wambalye Weikama. Born in Uganda, Weikama later moved to the United States, where he earned his Master’s degree in Technology Management from the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. He later returned to his home country and is currently based in Kampala. Weikama is the author of African Son (2012) and The Bonds of War (2015). The stories in Weikama’s books are largely influenced by his childhood years in Uganda and the sixteen years he lived in the United States. In this interview, he talks about what inspired his acclaimed novel The Bonds of War, a work of historical fiction that centers around the lives of two child soldiers.

Do you write full-time?

Writing has been a hobby of mine since high school but I’ve never managed to get into it fulltime. In fact I use it as a sort of escape most times and most of the writing I do is spread between poetry, blogging and very short fiction writing. There have been very few times when I’ve been in a state of mind to carry me through a full length novel.

What was your childhood like?

My parents divorced when I was very young and my mother moved us into an apartment in the center of the city where she raised my sister and I single handedly. Growing up in the center of Kampala was exhilarating and nurtured in me a love for city living. The disadvantage with Kampala, however, was that the various wars and coups that Uganda experienced were always focused on the city. As such, there were many horrifying and unpleasant experiences that came with war. At around age of eleven I went to boarding school. For many families at the time boarding school was not only a safer environment for children but also was attractive because the best schools in the country were boarding schools. Going to boarding school at an early age and remaining in the system until high school gave me a chance to create very strong lifelong friendships.

Growing up in Uganda, were you into reading books? Who were your favorite authors?

My mother was a voracious reader and we always had books and magazines in the house but they were mostly adult books that did not interest me much. However after joining boarding school, a whole new world of young people’s literature opened up to me and the appetite I developed for reading saw me even picking books off my mother’s book shelf. During primary school, my favorite books were a series of African authored books called Pacesetters. These were perhaps the most compelling although we always had the ever present children’s’ books like the Hardy boys mysteries series and others of that sort. Later in high school I picked up western detective stories and others that were part of the broad literature syllabus in my school. Nevertheless the author who got me interested in writing is Ngugi wa Thiong’o, specifically his book The River Between. For some reason that book opened the world of writing for me and to this day I hold Ngugi as my idol.

Tell us about your new book, The Bonds of War.

Published earlier this year, The Bonds of War is a story told in the first person by Jean Baptiste and it covers a seventeen year period starting when he was eleven in Rwanda on the eve of the 1994 genocide. JB as he is known tells the reader about how he ended up as a child soldier in the ranks of a rebel outfit that was bent on deposing the Ugandan government. In the story JB is unapologetic in his narration and makes no effort to sugarcoat incidences of brutality by him and others around him, or the consequences they had on his life and that of others. Over the years JB grows from a child into a man and life flings him back and forth between pain and euphoria until the point in Long Island when the storms seem to settle and he is able to pen his story.

What was the inspiration behind it?

Throughout the nineties there were so many wars within the East African region and most of the fighting sides used child soldiers a lot. By the time I started writing this story, I was curious about what happened to these kids two decades later, especially those who did not die or were not assimilated into the regional militaries. [clickandtweet handle=”@africabookclub” hashtag=”” related=”” layout=”” position=””]Part of the inspiration for this book was to start a conversation about these children (now adults), whose lives were deformed[/clickandtweet] as children with no structures in place to rehabilitate them as they reintegrated into their various communities and pursued their lives. I created two fictional characters that embody people who went through this childhood trauma. In the book, two boys are in this situation and their paths into adulthood are burdened by their childhood experiences and lead to very different ends.

Your main character, JB, evokes contempt and admiration. Was there a message you were trying to convey in depicting him this way?

Yes there was. As a community we need to know that child soldiers are indeed ticking time bombs. As a community that has many such children, the question we should ask is, now that it has happened and the wars are behind us, how do we defuse those ticking time bombs? The main character in this story is devoid of a moral campus. He’s taken as a child, abandoned and turned into a killing machine then at the end of it he is left to his own devises without the benefit of rehabilitation or counseling. When a person of this nature starts killing elephants for money, razing down forests for money, getting high on drugs repeatedly or torturing animals, one has to see this as the proverbial chickens coming home to roost. Society needs to intervene into these young lives before they derail completely and become a cancer on the community itself. While not all demobilized child soldiers end up as societal misfits and criminals, the stakes are stacked against them, and it behoves us as a people to have institutions in place to address this issue rather than burying our heads in the sand and hopping all is well because the war has ended.

Can you talk about the challenges of creating a work of historical fiction? Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction?

It is indeed a delicate balance because there are people who are not public figures that drive some of the historical events around which parts of the story revolve. In cases of this nature all I have to do is change the names while maintaining the circumstances. This however is no guarantee that the people whose names have been disguised will not feel aggrieved in some manner. The other issue about historical fiction is one has to undertake a lot of research. While one may be good at creating a totally fictitious world and rely entirely on that talent, once historical events are added to the mix the writer has to undertake a lot of research to make the story authentic and therefore more appealing. This is especially true in cases where the historical events are recent and vivid in contemporary memory.

As a writer based in Uganda, would you say there is a vibrant reading culture in Uganda today?

The reading culture does exist and it is growing. What is perhaps lacking is the content and the circumstances to feed that culture and make it vibrant. Many people say Ugandans do not read, but I see that the biggest selling newspapers in the country is a vernacular paper. People are reading tens of thousands of this paper daily. Perhaps those who write for a western or western-like audience are part of the reason for this perception. If for instance you see my books, the stories resonate meaningfully for a local audience as they touch on issues and characters that locals can relate with. However, that alone is not enough to increase readership. Not only does the story have to be relatable, it also has to be in a language the locals are comfortable reading and available at a price that they can afford. The English language version of my book may sell a lot more outside Uganda but may have to be translated into at least Swahili and Luganda before we can see a local audience picking it up in greater numbers. The other issue stifling reading in Uganda is that we are still burdened by low literacy levels and high poverty levels. Together these factors constrain many people to only engage in activities that have direct commercial value of which reading for leisure is not one. Most people who read do so because it is a school requirement while others read only religious or self-help literature. As such the critical mass for leisure readers is yet to reach levels that can deliver commercial value.

Are there writers today that you admire? Which ones and why?

Of course. My idol Ngugi is still very much alive and writing, but there’s a breed of younger African writers who are taking what the Ngugis, Achebes, and Soyinkas started many years back and using it to break barriers both within Africa and internationally in ways that the Achebes never did. People on this list who have inspired me in many ways are Binyavanga Wainaina, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dinaw Mengestu to mention just a few.

]]>https://www.africabookclub.com/interview-with-ugandan-author-wambalye-weikama/feed/4Winners of the May 2015 Africa Book Club Short Reads Writing Competitionhttps://www.africabookclub.com/winners-of-the-may-2015-africa-book-club-short-reads-writing-competition/
https://www.africabookclub.com/winners-of-the-may-2015-africa-book-club-short-reads-writing-competition/#respondThu, 18 Jun 2015 04:09:56 +0000https://www.africabookclub.com/?p=16756Congratulations to the winners of the May 2015 round of the Africa Book Club Short Reads writing competition.

We continue to be amazed by the quality and richness of the entries and this month was no different.

Macharia Mwangi from Kenya is this month’s winner with his story, At Work Today, in which the main character recounts his day at work on a flower farm. It is a moving story with a twist. Followers of this competition will know Mwangi from some of his earlier winning stories. Our first runner-up, Stella Riunga is also from Kenya. Her story was inspired by a newspaper article about working conditions at an illegal sand quarry, Riunga’s story, Sand Quarry, puts a human face to the people involved in this kind of work- their precarious lives, routines, and hopes. Nigerian author Ozimede Ekhalume’s story, The Devil is a Chauffeur, completes our list of winners for the month. Ekhalume writes about a man, who finds out that his driver has more baggage than he can handle.

For a limited time, you can read all the stories online at Africa Book Club.

About the Africa Book Club Short Reads Competition

The Africa Book Club “Short Reads” Competition is a monthly writing competition that features short stories drawn from contributors across the African continent. We accept unpublished fiction and creative non-fiction submissions, not exceeding 3,500 words, and whose setting and context are primarily set in Africa, or written by African authors.

We welcome entries that celebrate Africa’s diversity and rich story telling traditions – anything from fiction and non-fiction stories that reflect life on the continent to childhood memoirs and travel stories. For more about the competition, including eligibility criteria, prizes and entry process, click here. You can also find all the recent winning stories here.

Nelson hated driving, especially driving to and from work through the Lagos rush-hour. So, he always engaged chauffeurs even though they came with a lot of baggage.

Years before, he had employed a driver who coughed persistently in the car. When Nelson asked why, the driver claimed he was allergic to the blast of chilled air from the car air conditioner. But even when the air conditioner was off, Nelson noticed the driver still coughed. So, Nelson had insisted on a medical test. It turned out that the driver had tuberculosis. And to think that the man had driven Nelson, his wife, and his daughter who was barely three years old, for over a year. They had spent hours with him in the enclosed space of the car with the air conditioner running. After he had dismissed the driver, Nelson took his entire family for check-up to ascertain they’d not been infected. It turned out they were lucky. But he’d learned his lesson.

From then on, Nelson ensured any driver or domestic aide went through thorough medical tests, which included checks for TB and HIV, before employment. And then his wife insisted on subjecting them to an exorcism session with a pastor to rule out “witchcraft and spiritual manipulation,” whatever that meant.

Another thing that Nelson had learned was that you couldn’t trust chauffeurs, even when they claimed to be born again. He had had born again drivers who swindled him when he sent them to fuel the car. Instead of buying a full tank, they’d buy a quarter less and pocket the difference.

In his dealings with drivers, Nelson made sure he never put himself in a position that allowed a driver to hold his balls. Never! Because sooner or later, they would crush those balls. He’d heard of many occasions, where drivers exposed their bosses’ misdeeds. He knew a driver who, when he was fired, reported his boss to the management of his company – that he ran a business on the side that conflicted with the interests of the organisation. The boss was sacked. Or the chauffeur, who in revenge for dismissal, revealed graphic details of his boss’s sexual escapades to the wife. The rule was, never let your driver be privy to anything you didn’t want broadcast on prime-time TV.

***

Nelson’s current driver, Okhai, though a Secondary School Certificate holder, was smart, neat and well-dressed.

Now, Okhai was in trouble and there was no way he was getting out of this unscathed.

The receptionist had rung Nelson that he had a visitor, One Miss Folayemi Adeojo, who said Nelson had asked her to see him in the office. Though he couldn’t remember anyone by that name, he allowed her to be ushered into his office. A few minutes later, two ladies walked in.

“Good day, sir,” they greeted.

“How may I help you? Which of you is Miss Adeojo?”

“I am,” the one in tight fitting black pants and a red top replied. She had smoky eyes and lush eyebrows. “Sorry, sir, but it’s not you I want to see. I requested to see Mr Nelson Dokpesi, the Director, Corporate Banking.”

Nelson sensed a drama was about to unfurl.

“Do you know Mr Nelson Dokpesi? Have you met him before?”

“Yes, sir. I met him last month at the NYSC orientation camp. He asked me to see him here once we’re discharged from camp. I’ve been calling his phone. He’s not answering. I guess he’s been busy.”

“Well, young lady, there’s only one Mr Nelson Dokpesi here, and by the grace of God I am the person.”

The ladies cringed. The look on their faces was that of confusion.

“And there’s only one Director, Corporate Banking here. By the grace of God I am that person.”

Folayemi smiled – a nervous and dry smile. She looked polished and her accent sounded British. Nelson guessed she may have schooled in England.

“Are you kidding me, sir?”

Nelson was losing his patience.

“Do I look like a clown? I’ll have to ask you to leave my office, ladies.”

The other lady spoke, “We’re sorry, sir. There’s a mix up somewhere. We met Nelson Dokpesi at the NYSC welcome party sponsored by your bank. He said he was the Director, Corporate Banking and he gave Folayemi his business card.”

Nelson had represented the Managing Director at the party true. But he was sure he hadn’t met either of the ladies.

“Really?” Nelson was puzzled wondering if the ladies were fraudsters. “Yes, I was at the party. But I don’t remember meeting you, giving you my card and asking you to come see me.”

The ladies before him didn’t look like scammers or hustlers. Nelson turned to Folayemi,“Where is the card the Mr Dokpesi gave you?”

She fumbled through her bag and brought out a card. Nelson scrutinized the card. It was his, but with his phone number crossed off and another one scribbled below it in blue ink.

“This is my card quite all right. But this is not my number and this is not my handwriting.”

“Mr Dokpesi crossed out the printed number and wrote the other one, saying his number has changed,” Folayemi said.

“Stop saying Mr Dokpesi. It should be obvious to you by now that the man you met and introduced me to is not Mr Dokpesi,” her colleague said in a gloating tone.

Someone who was present at that party had impersonated Nelson. This was dangerous, Nelson thought. He wanted to call the police to get to the root of the matter. But then, he decided to call the number that was scribbled on the card first. When he dialed the number on his phone, a name showed up on the screen. It was a saved number on his phone. It was someone he knew. He cut the call swiftly, reclined on his seat and laughed. The ladies looked on not knowing what to make of the whole scene.

“This is Okhai’s number. My driver,” Nelson said.

The ladies exclaimed, “What?”

Folayemi’s friend said, “A driver?” She turned to Folayemi, “You slept with a common driver? And for nothing? I warned you, Folayemi.” She switched to Pidgin English, “Na we wey we go school for Nigeria here know wetin dey. You never tear eye like us. See how common driver smooch you, knack your arse for ground for inside Prado for camp. He tell you say him be director and you just believed like that.”

Folayemi, looking dazed, choked back tears.

Folayemi’s colleague said to Nelson, “All these girls who think they know everything because they schooled in England. Well, they may know all the books but they are not as streetwise as those of us who schooled here.” She hissed, and rolled her eyes.

Folayemi stood there with clasped hands to her face, weeping.

Her friend continued, “Sir, your driver is crafty and wicked. He promised my friend that after the orientation program, he would get her assigned to do her one-year service in this bank. It was based on his promise that she let him have sex with her in the backseat of the black Prado Jeep that he drove that night. Really, this could be considered a rape, technically.”

Nelson smiled. While he felt pity for Folayemi, he wondered when a mutually consented to sexual act, though contrived by falsehood, had become a rape.

Nelson said, “I’m sorry, lady. It’s a pity this happened to you. That Prado is mine. Okhai drove me to that party in it. He must have committed this atrocity while I was engaged in official functions at the party. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with him.”

He called through the intercom and asked the receptionist to fetch Okhai from the drivers’ room.

When Okhai sauntered in, Folayemi lowered her gaze, ashamed of herself. She shook her head and burst into tears afresh. Okhai, surprised to see the ladies, cringed, and then puckered his face.

“Okhai, if you’re the Director, Corporate Banking, what does that make me? Your driver, I guess?”

“Oga, I’m sorry, sir. The devil made me do it.”

“Shut up! I will deal with your matter after I’m done with these ladies.”

***

Okhai wasn’t just Nelson’s chauffeur; he was also a cousin to Nelson’s wife. After the incident, Nelson decided to fire Okhai, but he was forced to recall him due to pressure from his wife and his in-laws. He was angry with himself for breaking his own rule – never hire a relative. Never engage a hire you couldn’t readily fire.

In the months that followed, Okhai seemed to have learned his lesson and had behaved himself until the time he drove Nelson to Benin.

Nelson, his wife and children, were in Benin to attend his niece’s wedding. Their host, his brother, made a reservation of two rooms for them to stay at a hotel at the GRA. Nelson and his wife stayed in one room, while the children stayed in the other. There was no provision made for his driver. Nelson felt it wasn’t right to make a driver pass the night in the car, like most people he knew did. So, as he had always done for his chauffeurs when they traveled out of town, he paid for a room for Okhai.

Not long after they had all retired to bed, Nelson was roused from sleep by a knock on the door. He checked the time on his phone. It was 2:17am. The knock resumed, this time intense. Whoever was at the other end was desperate to get someone to answer the door. His wife had also woken up. They were both alarmed fearing that robbers had invaded the hotel. He had heard stories of how robbers invaded hotel rooms, looting, raping and killing. His wife whispered to him that they should hide in the bathroom, as if that would make a difference. They muffled prayers under their breath. What about the children in the room next door? Where they safe? Nelson worried.

Nelson summoned courage and asked, “Who’s there?”

No answer.

He asked again and a voice replied, “Oga, na the receptionist o. I’ve been calling your intercom, you didn’t pick.”

Nelson was not convinced. He imagined the robbers wanted to trick him to open the door.

“What’s the problem? Why are you pounding at my door? What do you want at this time of the night?”

“Oga, na your driver o. He dey fight woman for downstairs.”

Okay. If he said his driver was making trouble downstairs, it was likely to be true. He knew his driver.

“Abeg, make you come settle the matter o.”

“All right, I’ll come down straight away,” Nelson said.

Nelson slipped into his pyjamas, crept to the door, opened and peeped into the passage. Not seeing any sign of danger, he called his wife to check on the children while he dashed downstairs.

***

The night before, Okhai had retired into his room after dinner. The opulence of the room dazzled him. The twin bed had clean white sheets overlaid with a cream duvet. He kneaded his fist gently into the mattress again and again. The feel was like kneading into a curvy woman’s navel. The floor was marbled in light brown. The room smelled of lavender. He picked the two remote controls on the mahogany nightstand and flicked on the TV and the air conditioner. The air conditioner purred into life. He went into the bathroom – it was clean and sparkling – ran the tap and flushed the toilet, confirming they worked. He shuffled back into the room and flopped on the bed. He heaved himself up and down the mattress to savor the softness. This was Okhai’s first time out of town with his boss, and his first time in a hotel room. Envy seeped through his mind against rich men for their access to such luxury. He glanced through the hotel directory, called the bar, ordered for stout, flipped channels and settled to watch a soccer match between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. An avid supporter of Chelsea, Okhai was angry when his team were trashed by three goals to five.

Despite having downed five cans of stout while watching the match, he tossed on the bed unable to sleep. He imagined what his boss was doing with Madam right now. Lucky rascals! Okhai imagined his own wife and four children back in Lagos huddled together inside the dingy bedroom of their room-and-parlor apartment ravaged by mosquitoes and the scorching heat. It occurred to him he needed to share this treat he’d been offered with someone. The splendor he was surrounded with seemed, like an aphrodisiac, to have fueled his passion. He didn’t want to sleep, in this air-conditioned room, on this fluffy bed, all alone. Wasn’t it a twin bed by the way? Bed for two. This opportunity must not go to waste, he told himself.

Okhai scrambled to his feet, slipped on his sneakers, picked the car key and stumbled to the reception. He inquired which part of town he could pick up girls. The receptionist without hesitation told him he could head to Uniben campus, but the girls there were expensive. Or he could get more affordable girls within the GRA, by the junction. It was obvious the receptionist was used to giving this kind of advice to lodgers.

The time was about 11:45pm. Okhai drove his boss’s car into the night. Just after making the first turn down the road, he sighted three girls standing by the roadside. From their skimpy outfits he knew they were hustlers. He slowed down and parked a little distance after them. The girls scrambled to his side jostling to outdo each other. He wound down the glass, letting out a gust of cool air from the air conditioner. Soft music blared from the sound system. Peering at the girls, he beckoned to tallest one. She was light complexioned. He reasoned since his wife was short and dark, he would try something different. The other girls, dejected, retreated into the cold night to try their luck elsewhere. The lucky girl hopped into the car and Okhai zoomed off.

“How much?” Okhai asked.

“Na all night you wan do?”

“Yes.”

“Three thousand naira.”

“Ahan! Na so woman dear for Benin? Let me pay two-five.”

“Two-eight last. I am not a street girl o. I’m an undergraduate at Uniben.”

“Okay.” That was fair enough for an undergraduate, Okhai thought.

“What’s your name?”

“Kate.”

“Kate, fine girl. My name is Nelson. I’m the Director of Corporate Banking for Regent Bank.”

He flipped out one of his boss’s business cards from a compartment and gave to Kate.

She peered at the card. “Na big man you be and you dey price woman like beans.”

“That’s a good sum for a night, Kate.”

“You be nice man o. Customers no dey gree give us their complimentary card like this o.”

“Wetin I dey do with them. I get them plenty,” Okhai said as he revved the car.

When they got to the room, Kate insisted on “payment before service.” But Okhai’s assurances made her waive her – in her own words – “standard operating procedure.”

“No wahala. I know you will pay. A director like you will not risk his reputation for a paltry two thousand eight hundred naira.”

When Okhai had had his fill, he thought it was wise to dismiss Kate rather than keep her till morning. Now clear-headed, he groped through his pockets. He found only a five-hundred-naira note. What had happened to the rest of his money? He tried to recollect – he had spent it on drinks. He was in a fix.

Okhai was angry with himself. He couldn’t even recollect the details of their act together, he’d been drunk. And now he had no money to pay the bitch. He regretted the whole thing.

“If you don’t want me to shout, pay me my money. Bank director,” Kate sneered at him. “You don’t have money on you, you go carry woman. What kind of bank director are you? I will disgrace you today. I be proper Benin asawo, I no be Lagos asawo. I go deal with you today.”

She held Okhai by his waistband and slapped him. Then a scuffle ensued. When Kate was able to snatch herself from his grip, she flung the door open and ran to the reception screaming, “Yeye bank director wan kill me o! He do finish, he no wan pay.”

“Don’t shout here, please. This is a hotel. People are sleeping,” the receptionist cautioned.

The receptionist followed her to Okhai’s room, where Okhai sat on the bed, downcast.

“Bros, how far?”

Okhai didn’t reply.

The receptionist said to Kate, “My sister, you for collect money before show. This man na driver. Him oga na the bank director.”

Not bothered by the information, she replied, “Whether him be director or driver o, I no care. Make him pay me my money.”

Okhai said he’d thought he had money on him. He begged the receptionist to lend him money which he would refund at daybreak, after he had borrowed money from his boss. The receptionist glared at him, a look that suggested he thought Okhai was a fool.

“It’s either I report to your boss or call the police. We cannot allow the two of you to disturb the peace of our lodgers,” the receptionist said.

Okhai pleaded, to no avail, that he would lose his job if his boss was called into the matter.

***

When Nelson got downstairs, he met Okhai slouched with his arms clasped across his chest, somber. The girl held on to his waistband. She looked twenty, twenty-one. Her miniskirt was way high above her knees. Her skimpy blouse clung to her slim frame and exposed her midriff. The neckline plunged, exposing her red bra and cleavage. There was no iota of shame on her face or in her demeanor. She was all business-like.

“Oga, your driver no get money, he carry woman. See me, see trouble o.” Kate’s small breasts jiggled as she spoke and heaved her frame up and down. She fluttered her false eyelashes.

Nelson would not dignify this little tart. Exchanging words with her would mean just that. What was Okhai thinking going to pick a prostitute when he didn’t have money on him? he wondered. Why would the comfort of a hotel room incite a man’s testosterone to shut down his brain, letting his groin take over his thinking? It baffled Nelson. He asked Okhai how much he had agreed to pay the woman.

“Two thousand eight hundred naira, sir,”

“Na lie. Na three thousand naira,” the girl said.

When Okhai made to answer back, Nelson shushed him with a glare and a finger to the lips.

The receptionist said to Okhai, to Nelson’s hearing, “It’s yours boss’s fault. Why would he put you in a room? When he could have left you, like other drivers, to sleep in the car or on the couch by the reception. Your oga is too nice; giving a room of twenty five thousand naira a night to an ordinary driver.”

Nelson ignored the comment. He went back upstairs to pick some cash. He paid the girl five thousand naira. She hissed and cursed as she left. Nelson retrieved his car key from Okhai, and gave him five thousand naira to transport himself to Lagos by daybreak. Okhai would not chauffeur him any more.

Okhai, grovelling, begged, “Sorry, sir. The devil made me do it. It will not happen again, sir.”

“The devil indeed,” Nelson said shaking his head.

The engagement of Okhai as his driver was over. That he was sure of. There would be no family considerations this time.

Wa Muthoni’s dark muscles gleamed with sweat in the late morning sun. He and Momanyi worked in silence except for the occasional grunt of “Huuu!” as they heaved shovelfuls of sand into the back of the lorry. The sand worked its way in between their fingers and toes, combining with the sweat running down their chests and backs to form a gritty substance that never quite washed off, even after numerous baths. At the top of the sand quarry, children played and shrieked, mindful of the deceptively blunt edges of the cliff. Many a child had lost their little lives falling over those edges, especially during the long rainy season when the quarry turned into a seasonal dam. Every now and then, miners stumbled across tiny bones as they dug deeper and deeper into the once-solid walls of the quarry, reminders of another victim, another grieving family. The sand swallowed and then spat out, it never retained anything.

The mound at the back of the lorry grew higher and higher. The two filler-boys, Kang’ethe and Njama, jumped onto the back of the lorry and spread out the sand evenly, compacting and patting it down as they went along. It was a long way to Nairobi, where the sand was headed, and they had to make sure that as little as possible of the precious sand was lost. The teenagers were shirtless too. Where Momanyi and wa Muthoni were hardened and beefy, Kang’ethe and Njama were sinewy, with muscles still developing and concave stomachs that dipped into tiny waists. The teenagers longed to look like the older miners one day, to have girls tremble with lust every time they glanced at their muscular bodies. Njama gave a shrill whistle and leaped off the lorry, and Kang’ethe followed. The lorry was full. The driver, who had been napping in his seat, woke up, stretched and switched on the engine. It roared to life and he set off from Kangundo to Nairobi, about 70 kilometers away, the last ten of which would be spent crawling through traffic.

Wa Muthoni’s head beat to a strange rhythm. He yawned and stretched, then went to get his water bottle. He drank slowly, careful not to drink too fast and develop a stitch. He sat in the shade cast by the quarry wall and laid his head on the back of his arm, thinking of nothing in particular. It was now twelve o’ clock and the sun was directly overhead. The children had gone to their various homes for lunch and only a few birds dared to croak in the dead heat. Momanyi flopped down next to him in the same position. They silently wondered what was keeping Nthenya, the lunch lady, so long.

She soon waddled into view, her familiar basket slung over her head in the traditional way.

“Greetings mother,” Momanyi and wa Muthoni called out respectfully.

“Greetings my sons,” she responded wearily, setting down her burden. She unpacked two plastic plates, clean but with an oily film stubbornly clinging to their surfaces, and started to dish out their lunch. Today it was githeri, heavy on the corn and light on the beans, and huge potatoes that would serve to fill them up. In another covered plastic dish she had packed a huge lump of ugali. She removed a battered plastic jug from the basket and proceeded to wash their hands in silence, using as little water as possible. After that she retreated to a shaded corner of the quarry to wait for the men to eat so that she could take back her dishes. Theirs was the third mine that she had visited that day. It was a tiring business, but it brought good returns. The men were not choosy, all they needed was good, solid food, huge quantities of it, and that at least, she was able to do. When she could, she brought fruits at an extra cost. Today she had none. After they had eaten, she rinsed her plates and packed them, pocketed her cash and left.

“Do you know where all this sand goes?” Wa Muthoni asked Momanyi.

“Nairobi,” Momanyi answered. He was not given to lengthy conversations.

“And have you seen the houses they build there?”

Momanyi was silent, then shook his head. He had been born right there in Kangundo, to parents who had left their Kisii homeland due to some family dispute. A lack of interest in formal education had led him to drop out of high school, after which he had done a couple of odd jobs here and there before he landed on the mining gig. Nairobi was far out of his radar.

Wa Muthoni exhaled. “Maybe it’s for the best you don’t know, son of a Kisii man,” he said mournfully. “They build houses, beautiful houses which they sell for millions of shillings. You should go to Nairobi one day, man.”

Momanyi laughed mirthlessly.

“Poverty is poverty,” he said. “I would still be poor even in Nairobi, only that I would be practicing my poverty near rich people.”

They both laughed at this, wa Muthoni wheezing with mirth. If optimism met Momanyi, it would surely shrivel up and die. He had a way of looking at life exactly as it was, unwilling and unable to imagine anything different, or better. Anyway, in this case the pessimistic bastard was right, poverty was poverty, wherever a poor man went, it would follow.

They took a short nap, as was their custom before the 4 o’ clock lorry came for another load of sand. Wa Muthoni spotted a tiny cloud in the sky and prayed that it would rain soon. The sand was a lot easier to deal with when dry, but he was tired of the baking hot days that made his head ache endlessly. The soft sand beneath them acted as a blanket, and they were lucky to get a cool breeze to lift and dry the sweat off their bodies.

***

Njeri peeled the potatoes and green bananas. The little one, Mathu, watched her in wonder from his vantage point on an old gunia on the floor. He drooled happily as he tried to chew the sticky banana peel. Njeri wagged her finger at her son and removed the peel from his mouth. It was soon replaced with a handful of soil. She sighed, stood up and fetched a cup of cold water from the plastic tank outside the kitchen. She rinsed her son’s mouth and latched him to her breast, securing him in place with a leso that she wound round him and tied at the nape of her neck. He had already fed, but she needed to distract him as she prepared the evening meal.

She smiled as she pictured her husband’s smile when she served him his favorite dish, mashed potato and green bananas, with goat stew. She had already cut the goat meat and it was boiling away over the fire, on low heat. She liked to make it very tender, after which she would fry and mix it with spices to make a thick, delicious stew. The goat had been a gift from her parents, who had come to visit her two days before to see their grandson. They loved Mathu. He was named after wa Muthoni’s grandfather, a man who had been a father in all respects to her husband. Just like his namesake, he was calm and ever-smiling. Everyone told her how lucky she was to have a baby who didn’t spend all his time wailing. His father was completely taken by him, too. He played with him, held serious conversations with the little boy, and often put Mathu on his shoulders and took walks with him.

Yesterday, after one such outing he had returned and urged Njeri to put the baby to bed quickly. She had done so after feeding him, and then her husband had led her to their bed, his intentions clear. A potato rolled out of her now-still hands as she remembered their lovemaking, and the knife slipped into the basin full of already-peeled potatoes. She loved the feel of her husband’s body against her. Though he was decidedly heavy, she never felt like he was crushing her. She was often the one who would pull his weight towards her, to make sure that not even an inch of space was left between them. She would grasp his buttocks firmly and let her hands roam freely all over his back as he drove her to the point where she would start shaking and moaning, before he allowed himself to let go too. Now that she was breastfeeding, he took extra care not to hurt her breasts, which were often tender and uncomfortable. She was grateful for this, knowing how much he had enjoyed them before the baby. He was always pleased when she enjoyed herself, and she had been shocked that ‘it’ could be so good. Sometimes she embarrassed herself with her longing for her husband. She had not known that one could want it so much. From what most of her older sisters and other married friends had told her, ‘it’ was a hurried, embarrassing and annoying activity that they endured solely to please their men, after which they either fell pregnant and were therefore released from their duty, or were abandoned for a while as their husbands serviced their other wives and mistresses.

Her sisters had been quick to notice and tease her about her newly-wed glow. “The farm is being tilled very well,” they said to each other with knowing expressions. “No weeds can grow here!” At which they giggled and clapped their hands.

Wa Muthoni was not like every other man. He shared his ideas with Njeri, instead of expecting her to accept every decision that he made for their family. After leaving the mine, he always came straight home and they would talk about their plans for the future while they ate. He planned to save up enough money from the mine to build them a brick house. He had recently bought a few chickens so they could start selling eggs for some extra income. He was an enterprising man, and best of all, he seemed satisfied with his wife. Njeri had not heard any talk of him seeing other women. She considered herself truly blessed.

Njeri shook her head to free herself from her thoughts and returned to the task at hand, finishing quickly. Mathu was asleep, his soft little cheek resting against her nipple, a trail of saliva already forming in his partially-open mouth. His eyelashes fluttered as he dreamt, and she stroked the fine hairs of his head, wondering as she always did how she had grown such a perfect little being in her womb. She moved between the kitchen and the jiko outside, Mathu against her back, boiling and pounding the potatoes and bananas then finally frying the meat. It was dark by the time she was through, and she hoped that wa Muthoni wasn’t far. She removed some of the logs from the fire, stirred the ash about and left a few logs in, then placed both sufurias on top of the fire to ensure that the food remained warm. She woke Mathu up, fed him and put him to bed. She would wait for her husband before she ate.

***

The four o’ clock lorry had not turned up by five o’ clock. Wa Muthoni shook his head and decided to make his way home. Momanyi argued that they should wait, but even he knew that there would not be enough time or daylight to fill a lorry that came after five. It was painful to lose 500 shillings, but well, tomorrow was another day, perhaps their luck would be better then. Kang’ethe and Njama left for the day, while wa Muthoni placed a call to the driver in Nairobi. He said that the lorry had broken down and it would take most of the evening to be fixed. They got ready to go back home, shoulders slumped in disappointment.

They went back for their water bottles, shoes and shirts. Wa Muthoni was just buttoning up his shirt when there was a sharp crack of thunder in the sky. To their surprise, it started to rain. They quickly moved to the back of the quarry, where the overhang formed a natural shelter. As it happened in these parts, where there were hardly any trees to absorb the force of the droplets, the rain poured down in uninterrupted sheets. Flashes of lightning preceded the claps of thunder that sounded every now and then, and from their shelter it was a magnificent sight to watch. The sand beneath them steamed as it gave up its heat to the fury of the rain.

A fresh burst of rain had just started when there was a sound like a sharp crack, and then suddenly sand started raining down on them. Wa Muthoni was so shocked that he stood still, unable to move. Momanyi was already ahead of him, scrambling out of the quarry as he screamed “Run! Run!” There was another loud groan and the top of the quarry came down. Wa Muthoni covered his mouth with his shirt, moving further and further back into the quarry. There was sand all around. It rained and poured sand, hot, wet, heavy clumps of sand. It was so hot inside. So so hot. He removed his shirt from his mouth and then blocked his nose as the sand continued to press him further and further back. He could not hear anything now, and he dimly realized that perhaps the sand had entered his ears. The sand, heavy with the water it had just absorbed, continued to pour around him. He kept his eyes closed, because he knew once the sand entered his eyes there would be no more hope for him. More sand rained on his head, forcing him almost to his knees. It was so heavy. So very heavy.

***

Mathu woke up crying, and Njeri’s eyes flew open. She had fallen asleep in the kitchen, and the fire had gone out. The rumble in her belly confirmed that she had not eaten, which meant that wa Muthoni had not come home. An uneasy feeling shook her to the core as she tried to feed Mathu. He picked up on her unease and would not stop crying. After about an hour of battling to feed him and soothe him, he finally fell asleep, and then she was woken up again by somebody banging on her door.

“Nyina wa Mathu, Nyina wa Mathu!”

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and opened the kitchen door. She could see somebody knocking at the main house. It was her neighbor, Wangu.

“Wangu what is it?” she asked in confusion. Wangu’s eyes were fiery red and she seemed unable to speak. A fine trail of mucous snaked its way from her nose to her mouth, but she was too distraught to wipe it away.

“Wangu what is it?” she asked again, shaking the other woman’s shoulders to get her attention.

Wangu’s body convulsed in sobs.

And then a car drove into the compound. In it was the assistant chief, looking very sombre and accompanied by two AP policemen in their brown uniforms and AK 47’s strapped to their sides.

“Nyina wa Mathu, please come with me,” he said somberly after a hushed greeting.

“My baby….” Wangu quietened down enough to fetch Mathu and assure her that she would take care of him. Njeri stepped into the back of the ancient Peugeot 504, with every bit of her trembling and sweating.

“Is it my husband?” she asked the assistant chief. He patted her hand briefly but did not reply, then looked straight ahead while one of the APs drove the Peugeot. She recognized the route. They were headed to the quarry. The AP parked beside the dry river bed, now a stream thanks to the previous night’s heavy rain that marked the entrance to Quarry 1, and opened the car door. Njeri got out and noticed a crowd near Quarry 3, which was farther ahead. There were women wailing and a crowd of onlookers staring. She ran straight to the quarry, but it was not a quarry anymore. It was completely filled with sand. Odd weeds and other plants that had been growing near the edges of the cliff above had been hurled down by the force of the storm. She cast around wildly for her husband, fully expecting to find him there, waiting to see her.

“Wa Muthoni!” she screamed. “Come out! Come out!”

An elderly woman near her grabbed her and tried to hold her in her arms but she fought her. “Come out! Come out!” she screamed again, clawing at the sand with her fingers. The onlookers looked away, some of the women wept for her, but no one else tried to restrain her. She continued to dig at the sand, calling her husband’s name, until the assistant chief came and, assisted by two police officers, physically removed her from the scene.

The ambulance from the main hospital took more than an hour to come. The road was bad and there was no money for fuel, not until the assistant chief sent them some money via MPesa to buy fuel. It was another two days before wa Muthoni was dug out. His knees rested against his chest, and there was sand in every fold, line and square inch of his body. The parts that had been soaked through with the damp and heat inside his sandy tomb were beginning to rot, beneath his shirt. Journalists swarmed the scene like flies on a carcass, snapping pictures and sounding appropriately mournful as they made live reports from the quarry.

The government declared the mine illegal and it was promptly sealed off. The county senator and governor came to Njeri’s home to personally comfort her. They appealed to the government to provide employment for the people of that area, so that they could stop involving themselves in dangerous activities like sand quarrying. The area MP came under fire in Parliament for neglecting his constituency. There was a bitter war of words between him and the governor, which came to a head during wa Muthoni’s funeral. It was the most excitement the people of the area had had for a long time.

Unknown people began to mine the sand at night. A month after the incident, the quarry was back. Another month after that, Njeri breastfed Mathu, dressed him in his Sunday best, strapped him to her back and walked to the quarry, humming a tune to herself all the way. She was at peace when she and her little boy went to join her husband. She was only sorry she had waited so long.

It has been five years since Tati, my daughter, came to this world. Every morning, we walk together, as I take her to school before continuing off to work. I love this part of my day. Tati has the long hair that her mother has and rounded eyes that resemble my brother’s. The way she is growing she is going to be as tall as him. She is also so playful and she calls me Papee. Today, however, she said something that got me thinking. We were almost reaching her school when she stopped and faced me.

“Papee, you are growing old,” she said, extending her hands trying to reach my face with her hands that are wide with long fingers, like my brother’s.

“Papee, you will soon be an old man. I will read hard and buy you a walking stick made of gold,” she continued and smiled – a smile that reminded me of how my brother looked when we were small.

“And you are going to grow old and your back will bend and you will have wrinkles like this,” I said, using my hands to fold an ugly face. She laughed an innocent yet long and beautiful laughter that she cut short halfway, suddenly.

“But Papee, you will grow old before me, you know why?”

“I do not know, tell me Tati.”

“The way you cough at night and Ma wakes up to boil water for you. Teacher says that’s how old people cough.”

I get tongue-tied at this moment and I don’t know what to say. Uncomfortable silence follows.

“Papee, teacher says that when we cough like that we should see a doctor,” she continued.

“I will see one soon,” I answer and lift her up and carry her to the school gate.

“Papee, you haven’t bought me the book that teacher asked for.”

“At the end of the month, Papee will get paid and he will buy you that book, okay?”

“Thank you Papee,” she says and hugs me by the neck.

“Papee.”

“Yes Tati.”

“Papee, I will wait for you. Will you come and pick me up after school?” she asks.

“No Tati, Papee has to do some more work for overtime. Go home earlier and make tea for Papee.”

“Papee, who is overtime?” she asks after pulling her hands off my neck.

“It is homework for grown up people.”

“Papee, then why don’t you take it home?”

“Because it’s done at work.”

She looks away. “Papee, I hate Overtime. Papee, I will wait for you at home then. I will not sleep till you come.”

“Okay Tati. What will you do at school today?”

She hugs me and amid laughter, she says to my ears, “Read hard so that I will become a doctor and buy you a walking stick of gold.”

I laugh and put her down just in time for the school bell.

“Bye Papee.”

“Bye Tati.”

Isn’t she lovely? And addictive? I walk to work thinking about Tati and her mother, Jessica, and I long for our other child. Will he or she be as cute as Tati? Will he or she be as playful as Jessica? Will he or she also have small ears like my brother’s? What if Tati is all we will ever have? Who will she grow up with? I brush the thought away, “We will have a baby, soon.” Jessica and I have decided that if our next child is a boy, we shall name him Mwanzo- after the town where Jessica and I first met, or Mana if she is a girl- after Jessica’s auntie who courted Jessica for me. But Jessica isn’t pregnant yet and we are not losing hope.

“If only my body would let me, just for one night…” I bite my lower lip. It has been five long years of waiting and waiting and nothing. At first it was bearable because Jessica was patient with me. She kept telling me that soon, either Mwanzo or Mana would come and Tati will not have to play alone anymore. During the first two years, she tried everything to get me to work but nothing. Just a sub-soil worm every time. She even went to her people to ask for a solution and they told her to keep on trying. Never to relent. Never to give up. But after trying and trying and trying and nothing, she gave up- resorting to silence instead- a gnawing kind of silence that spells “USELESS” in her eyes that look past me each morning after another night of failure. That, I understand because it’s what I have become- useless, like an avocado tree that does not bear fruits.

“Soon… maybe sooner… but soon.” I promise myself as I round the final bend to the flower farm where I work. It is a big farm. Except for the rise and fall of the big brown plastic bags that cover the green-houses that have flowers inside- roses, tulips, lavenders and many others- nothing else of the farm is visible from outside. The farm has a tall perimeter wall, which is made even taller by an electric fence erected on it. The concrete wall ends at the gate where a big sign reads:

VINJI SHAH ROSES- KIAMBU FARM

PRIVATE PROPERTY; NO TRESPASS

The letters are big, like the sign board itself, and they are surrounded by many small rose-flowers that form a square around the sign. At the gate, guards in their sharp, well pressed uniform stop me. They stop everyone that comes into the farm. After taking my details they let me pass to the second gate which is between the administration block and the farm- visitors are not allowed past this gate; only workers pass. Here, another guard roughly inspects me and confiscates everything from me (except the food container which he opens for me to scoop a spoon from). The rest they record in their books and keep custody of till evening when they give them back as I sign out of work.

“Morning Joe, looks like a beautiful day to die, huh?” Old Lumbasi, one of my co-workers, says and laughs but his laughter is cut short by a bout of coughing after which he spits a reddish brown spit. I guess it’s the tobacco that he chews or blood or both. I don’t know.

“Morning Lumbasi, yeah, every day is a beautiful day to die.” I say and laugh but my laughter is cut short by a bout of coughing. I am afraid of spitting so I just swallow and go inside the green house and start my work.

By mid-day, I have already sprayed four houses of roses and had it not been for the breaks I took to go outside the green-house to breathe fresh air after my chest became too heavy from the sharp piercing smell of the insecticide, I would have been on the fifth or sixth house. Suddenly, the hooting cry of the siren fills the air. When we started working here, we were told to meet up at the big square just outside the administration office whenever the siren went off. It means that something urgent has happened and every worker has to be there.

For the ten years that I have worked here, the siren has gone off only once- that time when they told us that some of us will not be coming to work the following day.

“The market is really bad in Europe at the moment and we Africans are not very fond of flowers,” the Indian owner of the farm had explained at the time.

I like the way he includes himself when he speaks of Africans. ‘Our Muhindi’ as we call him, also insists that the flower farm is ‘ours’ and we should therefore work harder to make better ‘our farm.’

After explaining that he was sorry that ‘our farm’ had to shed off some of ‘her children’, he went ahead to say that the farm would cut the pay by a small margin for the rest of ‘us’ who will continue working here because ‘our farm’ could sustain only that.

“Remember we are one family and we can only share the little that we get.” He is really nice, our Muhindi is, and I liked him even more when he did not include my name in the list of those who ‘our farm’ was shedding off even though we had to work more to cover for our brothers and sisters who had been laid off.

So when the siren goes off, I am crazy scared. I need this job, for Tati and for Jessica. We gather at the square to find cartons and cartons piled in front of the administration offices. Our Muhindi, who is sweating, paces up this way and down that way with one hand in the pocket and the other on his mouth. I am scared that our Muhindi is scared. He tells us that someone has reported that “our farm” is not following proper procedures.

“I have invited these people to inspect our farm and tell us which procedures we are not following. Yes, I invited them myself.” When the cartons are opened, we are given long white overalls and gumboots and some rounded things that we are supposed to put on our noses when we spray the flowers. Then we are given the afternoon off.

I go back to the greenhouse to pick up the tin which has my lunch. I had left it in the green house that I was working in with old Lumbasi. However, when I enter the greenhouse, I freeze. Old Lumbasi is lying there, his spraying pump clinging tightly on his frail back, his eyes popping out of the sockets, thick blood mixed with phlegm coming from his mouth and his hands tightly holding his neck. I don’t scream, I don’t run to call the others. I just stand there and my heart does not beat fast. I feel empty. I sit down for a while then I rise and walk to our Muhindi.

“Lumbasi is dead,” I say to him, the same way you would tell a stranger “You dropped your handkerchief.” I think that he has not heard me because he slowly pulls his tobacco that is wrapped in a small polythene bag from his pocket and puts some into his mouth. Then he spits on the ground and doesn’t say a word.

“Sir, Old Lumbasi is…”

“I heard you,” He cuts me short and closes his arms at his chest and his eyes narrow and he looks at me briefly before turning his gaze away into the distance. Silence.

“Where is he?” He finally asks and spits his tobacco. I do not answer him, I just walk back into the green house and he follows me. He removes his handkerchief and wipes Lumbasi’s mouth and gives it to me.

“Go throw it in the latrine and don’t show it to anybody,” he says and starts looking for something. Then he stops when he realizes that I am still standing there.

“What are you still waiting for?” He asks, his eyes cursing me.

“I will go now sir.” I start out of the green-house. I am at the door when he stops me.

“Joe,” I do not answer or turn to look at him. I just stop moving and wait.

“No word about this to anyone, okay?” he says and his voice had conspiracy in it. I don’t say yes sir or no sir, I just put the handkerchief into my pocket and continue walking. Later, as I am walking out of the gate, I hear my name being called. I turn.

“Lumbasi committed suicide by drinking herbicide. Is that clear?” It is Our Muhindi.

“Sir?”

“Make sure his wife and children understand this. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir.” I say, even though I know that Lumbasi didn’t have a wife or children. Even though I know that he did not drink any herbicide; at least not as in how our Muhindi meant.

“Drunk herbicide, are we clear?” he says. I don’t answer and I just walk on staring blankly at nothing.

I don’t know what that incident makes me feel. But it sure makes me want to rush home. Try to make love to Jessica and maybe make a baby. I walk faster. Jessica Wait for me, I am coming home. Please wait. I remove the handkerchief that my Muhindi used to wipe blood from Lumbasi’s mouth. It is white but with patches of red blood. I pull phlegm from my chest and spit on the handkerchief. Same red as the other patches. I start running. I need to try and make love to my wife and maybe make a baby. I run. I should have known that this is how it will end. I run faster. I need to try and make love to my wife and maybe make a baby. I run and run and run.

The house is locked from inside when I arrive. I knock. No response. I knock again. Who is it? Jessica asks. It’s me. I say. Did something happen? Jessica’s voice is scared. Whispers from inside. No… I don’t know. Open up. I say. Hold on a minute. Whispers. Legs tumbling on things. Silence. Door opens. I enter. Air smells of a strange perfume. Not strange really. My brother wears a perfume that smells of tulips and lavenders and roses and sweat. The house smells of tulips and lavenders and roses and sweat. I need Tati. I rush out. Just about time when school ends.

“Papee,” she says when she sees me.

“Tati,” I say. She runs and hugs me with the long arms that resemble my brother’s. I am happy again.